Today’s photos come from reader Bill Dickens, whose notes and IDs are indented. You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them, and don’t miss the eclipse photo at the bottom.
I’ve been camping at Flamingo, Florida in the Everglades National Park. April is a good time of year to visit with warm temperatures and before the rains arrive and turn much of the coastal prairie into mud. (The mosquitoes though are a constant.)
Here are some wildlife shots taken along the Coastal Prairie Trail – a 13-mile round-trip along a historical trail once used by local cottonpickers and fishermen. It’s now a part of the Everglades National Park. The trail winds through an open prairie of succulents and buttonwoods both leaved and dead, presumably from constant inundation by flooding.
It was the dragonflies that are the real star at this time of year. Swarms of them.
Plus a bonus shot taken of the eclipse. I drove from my home in Florida to the Texas Hill Country to view it from Tow, Texas. The weather was cloudy most of the morning leading up to the eclipse. Then the cirrus clouds were headed one way, lower-level clouds the other and five minutes before the eclipse it cleared and stayed clear.
The Wildflowers were out in the Hill Country and this makes it a pretty time of year to visit.
Coastal Prairie Trail:
Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) – there are actually two in the frame:
Osprey (Pandion haliaetus),:
Osprey with Fish tail:
Halloween Pennant Dragonfly (Celithemis eponina):
Blue Bonnets, the official flower of the Lone Star State, at Lake Buchanan in Tow, Texas (there are 5 different species of Blue Bonnet. I’m not going to guess):
The 2024 eclipse viewed from The Texas Hill Country:
Thanks Bill. Love the Bluebonnets. What optical aid did you use to record the prominences during totality?
No aids or filters. Just a 400mm (full frame) lens. I did a bunch of exposures over ~3stops then selected an exposure that balanced the corona against the prominences. (Expose for the corona all the way out and the prominences will definitely be burnt out. Try for detail in the prominences and the corona shrinks.) I could mess around and get both in photoshop although I’ve taken to just getting the image right in the camera / a philosophy I adopted from Summit Sports Photography. Get the image right in the camera with minimal adjusting and cropping.
Excellent. Thanks!
Awesome!
Nice photos! Thanks for sharing these.
Beautiful photos — thanks for sharing them.
A very fine set!
Excellent photos – thanks!
Beautiful photos, and such nice variety!
Really nice. Such a pretty part of Texas and perfect time of year to be there even if there weren’t a total eclipse. Worth the drive, for sure. Love the dragonfly staring at the camera shot. Also, the one of the Coastal Prarie Trail.
Pileated woodpeckers are always spectacular. Other photos gorgeous as well. Thanks.
Nice photos, thanks! Hope to visit that part of Texas before long.